Hey guys..
As the title says im a total n00b and need a bit of direction before I jump in :)....
first things first the distant goal is make a heavily story based game, I would love to go "point and click" but I think that's a bit far off in future, so to start im thinking of going down the visual novel road, I've spent about 2 months solid researching all things game dev and if one thing sticks out it's that your ideas are always way to big, so scale em back lol
The next thing is while im not totally against the idea I would rather not use one of the many VN engines out there, WHY? because I don't just want to make a story driven game I want to learn how to code properly while doing it, yes I could DL once of these VN engines like ren'py and maybe have something half way there within a week, its stupidly easy so I hear, BUT I wont get any knowledge of coding a game from scratch, I purposefully scaled back my idea's so I could go down this route...
so with that in mind Ive hit a bit of wall on my next step... the language....
ive not done any coding before, im self taught in HTML but nothing in regards to programing languages. I did a few days leaning C++ but while learning I was also researching the language and ill be honest its depth scared me off LOL.... im not looking to go that deep TBH.. and while C++ is a very powerful language I don't think im going to need anything that powerfull for where I want to go, im not interested in highly complex games, if my wildest ideas where to come true now creating something along the lines of the "broken sword" series would be incredible, and yes I fully understand something like that is still not "simple" :D....
So after my dabble with C++ (and really enjoyed it although I only created a very simple calculator) I decided maybe C++ would be to deep latter on down the road when the learning curve sky-rockets, one thing I did learn I wanted tho was, what ever I learn I want it to be object oriented so I went back the drawing board... I have always dismissed java for some odd reason, but in my research I narrowed it down to roughly C#/java... and I think im pointing more to java which has surprised me TBH, but the very little I did in C++ java seems very much like it, I find it very logical in its syntax which I like a lot, speaking of logical, I also learned that object oriented programming requires logical thinking, im very logical in how I think so the learning ive done on how object oriented programming works has come very easy to me (so far) and I like the way it works a lot....
So right now im really thinking about jumping into java. why? its cross platform, higher level than C++, a little more productive that C++, easier to learn that C++ due to its higher level, has huge amounts of library's...
as I say with the road I want to take in regards to visual novel with the idea of going point and click latter on I would rather not go down the engine route, say unity/UE4, ive read some teams going down this route with such games and a lot say they feel like that are swatting a fly with a shotgun and I still would be missing out of the coding experience of writing from scratch...
So this is where I get sketchy... am I wrong here??? would I be better learning C# and going down the unity route? am I bitting off more than I can chew by thinking of going down the java path and writing from scratch?
with the above in mind how difficult would it be to program a simple visual novel? im NOT expecting to do a few tutorials in what ever language and go for it, I know im going to need experience in smaller projects and im fully accepting of that truth, but am I still thinking to big and going to need atleast 4 yrs XP before im ready to think about coding such a thing...
In the longer view how difficult is a simple 2D point and click to take on? on another level? is it worth aiming for considering my current position or am I living in dream land?....
finally with what I want to do would you advise java or am I looking down the wrong path here...?
sorry for the wall of txt but I wanted to try get across where I am and need to know that im making the right choices before I jump head first into this im 35 now and time is running out LOL... any advice would be greatly appreciated
Best Regards
Rick